You cant believe anything these days

The Malta Independent

You can`t believe anything these days!

Put yourself in the PN`s shoes and ask yourself what is the best survey result you could hope for from the obliging Xarabank team. `A Labour overall majority in the upcoming local elections has to be provided for otherwise the survey` would be nullified in a matter of weeks. But the credibility of forecasting a Labour victory at the local elections ought to be used to bolster the prognosis of a wide PN victory at the general election. That`s the best the PN could hope for and that is what they got.

Anyone with average common sense would definitely question the validity of such conflicting results between the local and the general election surveys. One would also question why a fatigued government mal-administering a shoddy economy should find growing popular support at the general elections level

Clearly the appropriate answer is that the survey is totally defective. Any survey with a large chunk (30 % - 40%) that` report that they will not vote do not know whom they will vote for, carries no correspondence with reality. Add to this the large reject rate, i.e. people who refuse to take part in the survey and failure to adjust for such rejection effect and the` whole survey becomes a mockery.

Equal mockery of reality was made by the editorial of this paper singing glory to the HSBC`s good results for 2001 and interpreting them as a sign that the worse of the `recession` is over.` This is typical of poor analysis of the figures which are accepted at face value without any real probing or intellectual mining.` HSBC` Group reported an operating profit before exceptional items of Lm16.6 million which is Lm1.3 million down on the comparable figures of last year which has been re-stated down in this year`s financial statements. That is bad enough for the Group.` It is even worse for the Bank itself.` Operating profit before exceptional items is down from Lm10.2 million to Lm8.3 million.

If bank results are a barometer of the general economic tempo than the bank results are a more appropriate guide than the group results. The core banking activities of lending and advancing are conducted by the parent company while the rest of the group conducts non-lending activities which tend to move inversely with the economic tempo.

At times of uncertainty savers consume less and save more for the feared rainy day,` by raising their long term savings in life policies and fund investments carried on by the group subsidiaries. If HSBC results tell anything on the macro-economic performance it certainly does not say that things are getting better.

But even more serious playing with figures was the government pompously announcing an Enron-style off balance sheet financing trick on us this week.` We are expected to applaud. The Foundations for Tomorrow School would be raising Lm70 million debt off balance sheet of Central Government to finance public school development programme.` In so doing, just as in the case of the new hospital, it is mortgaging future governments` manoeuvrability by forcing them` to pay off currently assumed debts raised off balance sheet. Central government financing are so tight that it is constrained to finance social infrastructure development off balance sheet,` hidden in a remote Foundation in parallel to Enron notorious partnerships.

Like Enron`s balance sheet, you can`t believe anything these days!

Alfred Mifsud